Jennings becoming an Actor?

Did I compare Jennings to Johnson, Wayne, Moss, etc??? NO… YOU just did!!! All I said was that he was drawing the double teams for the Packers INSTEAD of Driver!!! His numbers were down some, but that still means he took a step UP to becoming the #1 WR. Look who stepped up down the stretch when it mattered! Over 500 yds in the final 5 games and playoffs!

NOT to shabby is it?!!

But see, I don’t think any of us would compare him to Andre Johnson, Randy Moss, Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, or Steve Smith. Those guys are the best of the best, and I don’t think Jennings is on that level. I think it’s a little premature to list Rice and Austin in that list. Both prior to this year have done virtually nothing. They both have to continue to produce.

Yes, we know all other #1 WR’s get double teamed but a lot of those teams didn;t have the same problems pass blocking that we did. I assumed you watched our games last year in the first half of the season. If so, I’m also going to assume that you saw us having to leave a Rb and Te back to block. As you can probably figure out, that leaves us with 3 guys to go out on routes. A lot of the time, teams only rushed 4-5 guys against our max protection sets and were STILL able to get good pressure against us.

What has made Jennings so effective these past few years for us is his tremendous route running and explosiveness. In prior years we would run him and Driver on slant routes pretty consistently. Teams would eventually start to play this, and when they did so, Jennings would give them the slant n’ go and be on his way. We have him run a lot of double routes because he is very, very good at them. In order for these to work though, you need time and the defense respected the underneath route. In the first half of the season, we presented neither. McCarthy wanted to start off games calling the deep routes. That in itself limits the effectiveness of double move routes. Then add to that, that Rodgers rarely had anymore then 3-4 seconds to throw. When that is the situation your put in, and teams are bracketing you, it’s going to be hard for you to be really effective.

Not surprisinly, when McCarthy started calling more quick route type plays and when our OL improved Jennings started to become more effective. I get that we’re paying him a lot of $, and I get we’d like him to be more productive, and under the right circumstances he has been and will be.